


the highway's low and the low way's mine

by shinealightonme



Series: a light in the window to pass the night through [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (not a euphemism), Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Car Sex, Driving, First Time, Hook-Up, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Stick shift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:16:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21619750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: "You can watch all you want," Ronan says. "I'm not letting you drive my car."
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: a light in the window to pass the night through [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666369
Comments: 76
Kudos: 1257





	the highway's low and the low way's mine

"I know it's a big ask," not that Gansey lets that stop him from asking. "But he really needs a lift."

"It's twelve fucking hours. That's not a lift, that's a pilgrimage."

"Don't be dramatic. It can't be more than eight."

"And then I have to _drive back to DC_ ," Ronan explains, like he would to a small child, since that's apparently the level Gansey is working on today. "I don't live in Boston like all your asshole friends."

"I hadn't thought of that," Gansey admits.

"You're really getting your money's worth out of Harvard, huh."

Gansey rallies, ignoring both the insult and his own mistake. "I would drive that far for you if you needed a ride."

"Good for you. So why don't _you_ drive him?" Ronan snaps his fingers like he's just remembered something. "Oh wait! You wanted to study abroad. Too bad. Guess you have to tell your friend he's on his own."

"I would never tell a friend that he was on his own," Gansey says. "If you really can't do it I'll find someone else who can. I had just hoped that I could count on you."

Ronan shuts his eyes. Breathes in.

"Wait," and that's how he ends up circling a block that isn't even in DC; he had to drive _south_ into Virginia for most of an hour to pick up Gansey's friend, just so he can turn around and drive north. This guy is already a huge pain in the ass. Ronan should just leave.

Through the open passenger window, someone asks, "Are you Ronan?"

He's never actually met Gansey's friend Adam. He's probably heard stories about him, but all of Gansey's stupid stories about his stupid friends blur together into one insufferable Ivy League blur. All he knows about Adam is that he needs someone five time zones away to solve his problems for him. That's enough to make Ronan hate him.

It isn't enough to prepare him for the fact that Adam is hot.

"Parrish?" he asks, trying to sound bored even though he's thinking _fuck you, Dick;_ he could have have _warned_ Ronan he'd be locked up all day in close proximity with a male model.

"That's me," Adam says. "Gansey's friend," an awkward comment followed by an awkward silence. "Can I get in the car?"

Right. The doors are locked. Ronan unlocks them and says another _fuck Gansey_ just for the hell of it.

Adam tosses an overstuffed backpack into the car before he climbs into the passenger seat. Ronan pulls away from the curb the second he's sitting down, before the door's all the way shut. Adam doesn't bitch at him about it like Gansey would, just buckles his seat belt.

"Thanks for the ride," he says. "I really appreciate it. I'll cover gas and everything."

"Yeah, you will."

Ronan steers back to the freeway, foot heavy on the gasoline. He wants to shave as much time off this drive as possible. He doesn't want to give Adam a lot of opportunity to talk about his research or crew practice or secret society initiation rituals or whatever the fuck he and Gansey have in common.

He's dreading the conversation so much that it takes him a while to realize that Adam hasn't said anything. He glances over and -- what the hell, Adam is _asleep_ , head tilting toward his shoulder and dusty eyelashes resting low. Who falls asleep in a stranger's car? The seat isn't even reclined.

Ronan's immediate instinct is to honk the horn, crank the radio up, make some loud obnoxious noise that will wake him up. But Adam looks tired; he would probably want revenge. And this way Ronan doesn't have to listen to him talk.

He drives in near silence for a couple of hours; it wouldn't even be terrible, if someone else wasn't making him do it. The gas tank warning light turns on, and he drives for another thirty miles just to make things exciting before pulling off the freeway.

Adam said he'd pay for gas. It's probably rude to wake someone up to bug them for money, but Ronan is cool with being rude. He wonders if it'd be more annoying to shake him awake or shout in his ear.

"Are we stopping?" Adam asks through a yawn before Ronan can make up his mind. He looks over just in time to see him stretch. The hem of his shirt sneaks up one distracting inch. "Oh, gas station, let me get it."

Adam steps out of the car. Ronan pops the tank open and gets out too, angrily stretching his legs while Adam pumps gas. He walks over to the pathetic little convenience store and glares at the kaleidoscope of packaged food on display.

"You want anything?" Adam asks from behind him. "On me. I owe you."

Ronan actually does want something to drink, but the offer pisses him off. "Gansey owes me. You don't owe me shit, you're just a package I'm delivering."

Adam says "okay" in a way that clearly means _you're really weird so I'm not going to engage_. He buys himself a soda that Ronan decides to steal first chance he gets.

Adam pulls out his phone while they walk back to the car, scrolls through it and ignores Ronan. Good. If Adam ignores him the whole rest of the way to Boston that makes Ronan's life so much easier.

Ronan starts the car and Adam whips his head around.

"You can drive stick shift?" He doesn't sound so aloof now.

"No, I got us this far on luck."

Adam ignores Ronan's sarcasm. Maybe that's what he and Gansey have in common, selective hearing. "Can you show me how to do it?"

"You can watch all you want," Ronan says. "I'm not letting you drive my car."

Adam clearly isn't happy with that answer, but he bites his lip and doesn't push it.

Ronan had said _you can watch_ mostly just as a dick way of saying _no_ , not because he thought Adam would want to. But Adam _does_ watch as he shifts into first gear, keeps watching with a close intensity that makes Ronan regret his words. It's unnerving having this guy study him, in silence, and it's somehow worse for the fact that Ronan has to watch the road, can't do more than throw a glance in his direction here and there.

"How'd you get stranded in Virginia, anyway?" Ronan asks, to divert some of Adam's attention.

"I wasn't stranded," Adam says. "I was hitchhiking."

"And you couldn't have done that all the way to Boston?"

"I was planning on it. Then I made the mistake of telling Gansey." He sighs. "I really thought that being in a different country would put a damper on his ability to fret over me."

"No, when he can't see you he just freaks out worse because he assumes that you're doing something stupid."

Adam's gaze drifts from Ronan's hand up to his face, which doesn't turn out to be a relief after all. "Oh, so I have you to thank for his overprotective tendencies."

"We were talking about you," Ronan says, because that's a dick way of saying _yes_. "I didn't say that it applied to me."

"Does it?"

Ronan just smirks.

Adam says, "I never bothered to learn all the names of Gansey's high school friends -- "

"Rude."

"Pragmatic," he corrects, absently, before he continues with his point. "So when he begged me to let his friend Ronan give me a ride I had to wonder, which one is that, the Madonna fan or the skateboarder or the angry feminist?"

"Yeah? Which one do you think I am?"

"Oh, definitely the jailbird."

"That was one time," Ronan grumbles. "They didn't even press charges." He glances over and gets hit with Adam's smile, sudden and searing like an electric shock.

"I assume you're also the car fanatic," Adam says, while Ronan tries to stifle his irregular heartbeat. "If that makes you feel better."

Ronan shrugs. "I never listen when Gansey talks about his college friends, but I wouldn't've figured any of them would be hitchhikers."

"You thought we're all too boring for that?"

"I thought you weren't so fucking stupid you'd get in a car with a stranger."

It turns out that smile is sharp even when it's at Adam's expense. "You're a stranger," he points out. "Should I be worried?"

Ronan clears his throat and looks over his left shoulder, changing lanes. "Gansey would be such a pain in the ass if anything happened to you on my watch."

"I guess it's not so bad that he meddled."

"Yeah, well, don't tell him that," Ronan mumbles.

Adam makes a noise, not quite a laugh, and turns to look out the window. The landscape out there must be pretty damn fascinating, because he just watches quietly and doesn't try to start another conversation. It's another hour before he says anything, and that's just, "are you hungry?"

Ronan is hungry. They pull off the freeway and hunt down the nearest fast food. Ronan steers toward the drive thru.

"You want to eat while driving a manual transmission?" Adam asks, appalled. "I thought you _weren't_ going to murder me."

"Hey, fast food's gonna kill you on its own, it doesn't need my help."

"Yeah, but it'll do it slower than a freeway pileup."

Ronan says "coward" but he does park the car. At least this way he doesn't have to worry about stains on the upholstery.

Adam offers to pay. Ronan lets him, ditches him at the counter to go snag a table. Adam rejoins him a minute later, burgers and a fuckton of fries and two sodas because _do you really not want a drink or are you just planning on stealing mine again_.

And then they're just -- two guys, sitting across from each other, eating dinner, like some kind of --

"So what's your major?" Ronan blurts out.

Adam answers, but not before raising an eyebrow judgmentally and making him wait for it. "Engineering."

"What? That's a normal question."

"It is normal, yes." Adam eats a fry and leaves the _but you are not_ unsaid. "I was under the impression you thought college was a waste of time."

Right. Of course that much about him has trickled out from Gansey to people who have never met him: Ronan couldn't hack it in school, Ronan dropped out. Ronan gave up. Feeling spiteful, he says, " _non vitae sed scholae discimus_."

He's looking Adam dead in the eye, because he wants to see his reaction: confusion, annoyance, irritation.

Adam's mouth falls open, a tiny fraction of an inch, just enough to let out a soft surprised sound. The expression is gone a second later, Adam smiling with one corner of his mouth and shaking his head.

Adam says, " _nil admirari_ ," and Ronan shoves half of his burger into his mouth at once so he won't have to hear himself respond.

When they're back on the freeway, Adam says, "now feels like a good time to tell you your music sucks."

"I'm driving, I can play whatever shit I want."

"So you agree it's shit," Adam says, undeterred.

Ronan rolls his eyes and lowers the volume until the electronic thud fades into the background. It has the unexpected effect of creating a vacuum in the car; that's the only reason he can think for the way words keep getting pulled out of him, the way Adam keeps responding: _why engineering -- why Latin -- when I was a kid I loved old things -- not anymore? -- old things can't love you back -- I like understanding how things work. They're easier than people -- yeah everyone gets so pissy if you take a person apart to figure them out --_

The rest of the drive melts away. Ronan's pulling off the freeway before he knows it, only notices that it's dark out because the car behind him doesn't have its lights on; his switched on automatically.

They get stuck at a red light on a hill, which is really only a problem because the asshole with no lights stopped right up on his bumper. Ronan is tempted to let the car roll back to teach him a lesson, but the BMW deserves better. He pops the hand brake until he can get the car in gear. It isn't hard, not as many times as he's done it; he has enough attention left over to notice that Adam is watching him again, interested in that maneuver.

"You really want to learn to drive stick?"

"Yeah." Adam sounds a little surprised at the question, but certain of his answer.

"Why?"

"I don't like not knowing how to do things."

Ugh. Ronan really wishes he'd said something like _so I can drive my daddy's sports car_ , because then it would be easy to brush him off again. Except if Parrish had a sports car he would already know how to drive stick. If Parrish had a sports car he wouldn't have been hitchhiking.

" _If_ we see an empty parking lot, you can do a few circles."

"Are you serious?"

"Don't make me rethink this," Ronan warns him. "Odds are you're gonna crash it."

"Kind of depends on how good of a teacher you are, doesn't it?"

Ronan spots the parking lot a few blocks later, outside a squat little business center with nine-to-five hours and tow away warnings. 

"Hey," Adam says, as Ronan pull in and kills the engine. "Thanks. I really appreciate this."

"Whatever." Ronan fiddles with the key chain where it dangles from the ignition. "You can owe me one if I'm ever in town." He likes the sound of that, leaving the door open to seeing Adam Parrish again some day, even though it barely feels like it makes a difference.

"I could," Adam says. "Or I could jerk you off."

Ronan's heart lurches forward and there's a ringing screech in his ears like he just slammed on the brakes. That -- it doesn't _work_ like that, that doesn't happen. Hot guys don't just offer you handjobs because you're nice to them. Sex is a weird tortuous process of jumping through hoops he doesn't want to for people he doesn't like.

Except this _is_ happening, and Adam is waiting calmly for an answer, so which is Ronan going to pick: does he hope for a flimsy excuse to meet Adam again someday in the future, or does he take what Adam is offering now?

Ronan nods. He immediately feels dumb. Adam can use his words, so can he.

"Okay," he says, hoping he sounds confident. "Driving first."

He does say a quiet _what the fuck_ as he walks around the car to the passenger side, but Adam is still in the car, clambering over the center console, so that's fine.

"The third pedal is the clutch." Ronan makes himself focus on the car, which has never been hard to do before. "Gear shift is here. Never fucking touch the gear shift unless your foot's on the clutch."

"Yeah, I don't really want to owe you a new transmission."

An image pop into Ronan's head of how Adam make _that_ up to him. He stares straight out the windshield. "Step on the brake and start the engine."

They drive around the parking lot for a while, Ronan making Adam stop every ten or twenty feet. His face is serious, frowning at even the tiniest mistake, like he's not getting it fast enough, even though he's doing great. Maybe it helps that he'd seen Ronan drive first. Maybe it's because he'd been paying attention to Ronan, the whole day, watching him --

"Turn out here," Ronan says.

Adam shoots him a look, surprised. He'd said they would stick to the parking lot, but so what? It's boring to go in the same neat circles around the same white lines, over and over.

"Drive up to the corner," and this time Adam turns out of the driveway.

The parking lot opens onto a dinky little side street, barely an improvement. Ronan directs Adam out onto the thruway and up into third gear; Adam shifts up to fourth without needing to be told. It's a nice time of night for driving, way past rush hour, thin traffic and green lights for days.

They circle around for a while, Ronan telling Adam to _turn left_ here or _turn right_ there, just to watch him downshift; he has no idea where the hell they are. They spend a lot of time in third and fourth gear. The first time Ronan tells Adam to shift up to fifth, he switches into neutral and gets a panicked look on his face.

"I can't find it."

"Top right."

"It isn't _going_ ," Adam snaps, and shifts back into fourth.

Right, the transmission is kind of stiff, especially in the upper gears. Ronan forgets, because he's used to it. He thought Adam was used to it to, but why would he be?

"Get ready to shift," he says, and Adam does it, although he's frowning again.

Ronan puts his hand over Adam's on the gear shift and guides it into fifth.

Adam inhales sharply, but his attention doesn't waver, eyes scanning the street while the speedometer roars higher.

Ronan leaves his hand where it is. He feels Adam's knuckles flex before he downshifts, and downshifts again: red light ahead. The light turns green, but Adam doesn't take them up to speed. He turns off the main drag and into quiet little rat's nest of residential streets. There's another empty parking lot, a boxy Protestant church. Adam doesn't need a safe space to practice in anymore, so, they're not here to drive.

_Jesus Christ._

Adam kills the engine and puts the parking brake on, without Ronan saying anything. He unbuckles his seat belt and then, in a deliberate sort of way, reaches over and unbuckles Ronan's.

Ronan shuts his eyes and tilts his head back against the headrest. There's no point in pretending he doesn't know where this is going, not when this is what they agreed on, when he's been hard since fifth gear.

Adam's hand comes to rest on his knee, heavy and warm, and then slides up his thigh and gets the button on his jeans. Unzips his fly. Reaches through the slit of his boxers. He isn't in a rush, but he isn't wasting any time either -- and then his hand is around Ronan's cock.

He gives it a light squeeze and works his hand up and down the shaft a few times, careful, like he's getting a feel for it. Of course he is; he likes learning how to do things, and right now he's decided to learn how to jack off Ronan Lynch, which means he's going to be amazing at it. It won't even take him very long. This will be over soon.

Adam asks, voice low, "is this okay?"

Ronan jerks out a nod, the back of his skull still pressing hard into the headrest. He gripped the gear shaft again at some point, the shape of the knob foreign in his left hand.

"Just -- tell me if it's not." There's a weird little note of disappointment in Adam's voice. Ronan probably should have said _yeah, it's amazing, it's so fucking good_. It is so fucking good, his grip solid and his fist sliding up and down at the perfect rhythm. He's coaxed Ronan's hips into rocking in time with his strokes, even though the rest of his body is clenched tight.

He hears Adam breathe in. He can't stand for Adam to ask him again _is this okay_ , can't stand to hear that hesitation, except he doesn't know how to stop it -- but Adam doesn't say anything. He leans close, his breath warm against Ronan's skin for one second, and then he kisses his neck, where he's left it exposed, vulnerable, more vulnerable than he knew -- 

Ronan hisses, " _shit_ ," too quick, too loud. He tilts his head further back, a wordless plea, _do that again_ , and Adam does. He presses his mouth to Ronan's neck, open this time, hot and wet, his tongue brushing over Ronan's skin. His hand is still stroking Ronan, slow and irregular, but even that's perfect, not knowing when or how he'll feel each jolt of pleasure.

Ronan gulps in air and opens his eyes. He's staring up at the car ceiling, which is just such a dumb thing to be looking at when Adam is leaning over the center console, kissing his collarbone, _biting_ at it. Ronan's hand jerks up from the gear shift, needing to touch Adam, before he realizes how awkward that would be from the passenger seat. Before he realizes how intimate that would be.

Adam retreats back to the driver's seat, pulling away from Ronan -- except he's grinning, pleased, no sign of disappointment or hesitation. He lets go of Ronan's cock to lift his hand from the gear shift up to his face. He kisses the pads of his fingers, nuzzles at the center of his palm, runs his tongue over his knuckles, while Ronan watches wide-eyed and panting.

Adam meets his gaze and tilts his face in Ronan's hand, until his cheek is resting against Ronan's palm, and then he lets go. Ronan presses his hand to Adam's face, not quite believing that's what Adam wants him to do. Adam smiles like Ronan has just done something amazing, and then he reaches down and strokes Ronan's cock again.

Ronan shuts his eyes, overwhelmed, but forces them open again a moment later. Adam's lips have parted slightly. Ronan runs his thumb over them. He thinks he sees surprise in Adam's eyes before they fall shut, dusty eyelashes fluttering down as Adam licks his thumb. Ronan swipes it over his lips again. This time Adam opens his mouth enough to bite down lightly on it, and that isn't okay, none of this is okay, it isn't fair that Adam can make him feel like this and _not kiss him_.

Ronan shoves his hand into Adam's hair, yanks him forward and kisses him. Adam kisses back, absolutely filthy. The slick noises of Adam's hand on his cock get drowned out by their harsh mingled gasps, by the way that Adam _moans_ at the touch of Ronan's tongue, Christ in heaven, Ronan needs to hear more of that sound, he needs that sound to never stop.

"Wait, wait, wait." Adam breaks it off, breathless. He stares into Ronan's eyes like Ronan's supposed to tell him what they're waiting for, except Ronan doesn't know, and Adam must decide it isn't important, because he lunges forward and fixes their mouths together again.

"Wait, hang on." Adam has apparently remembered whatever it was. Ronan groans -- how important could this really be? -- and then Adam scrambles out of the driver's seat, over the center console, and straddles Ronan in the passenger seat. His knees squeeze tight around Ronan's thighs. That -- yeah, okay, that was important.

"Okay, now," he says, like Ronan needed to be told, like he needed anything more than for Adam to touch him again. There's nothing perfect about the way he's stroking Ronan now, sloppy and reckless and incredible. This is the closest Adam has been to him all day, but he's still too far away, towering over him. Ronan grips his ass in one hand, slides the other up the back of his shirt and digs his nails in when he finds bare skin. He clings to Adam as tight as he can, while Adam completely and utterly wrecks him.

He can't look away from Adam's _face_. His eyes are shut now, his eyebrows pulled together like he's focused hard on something. He breathes in, choppy, and lets it out through open lips, like a word he starts to say but doesn't. Ronan doesn't want him to find that word. He doesn't want to know what it is.

And then Adam finds the only word that he wants to hear right now: " _Ronan_."

"Fuck." Ronan grabs hard at the back of Adam's neck and yanks him down, gets his mouth over Adam's and then he comes in Adam's hand.

He kisses Adam until he literally can't breathe anymore, stops just long enough to suck in air and kisses him again. Adam's hand is still caressing him slowly. Ronan doesn't feel even one ounce less desperate and on edge than he was before he came.

He rests his forehead against Adam's shoulder. His voice sounds strange in his own ears. "How do I get you off?"

"That wasn't -- " Adam whines, desperate. "That wasn't the deal. You don't have to -- "

"I want to."

Adam doesn't answer right away. It isn't that he doesn't want it: he's hard in his jeans, breathing fast, and when Ronan turns his face in toward his neck there's a trickle of sweat running down his skin. Does he think that Ronan cares about the _deal_? He doesn't. He cares about making Adam feel good. He cares about hearing Adam say his name like that again, euphoric and breathless. He cares about licking the sweat off Adam's neck, so he does it.

Adam shivers. In a voice that's barely more than a whisper he says "touch me."

Ronan unbuttons his pants and pulls them down his thighs. He pushes his shirt up, wanting to get as much of Adam on display as possible, and kisses his chest. "That's all you want?" He sounds more like himself, now. He sounds like the guy who made Adam smile and throw Latin back in his face. Now that he knows he gets to do this he doesn't feel that desperate drive, _now, touch him now, you need to touch him_. "There's got to be something else, you can't be that easy."

Adam's eyes are still shut. He answers like he's trying to hold the words in but can't. "Your voice."

"My voice?" He feels confused and kind of warm, in an odd feverish way: Adam likes _his voice._

A shiver runs up his body, along all that exposed skin. "I -- driving, that whole time, listening to you tell me -- " He bites his lip. "God, I thought I was going to die. Just, just keep talking."

"Fuck, Parrish, you're worked up, aren't you?" Ronan asks, marveling up at him. Adam nods. "You're so worked up and I haven't even touched you yet," and as soon as he says it he wraps his hand around Adam's cock.

Adam yelps. His legs buckle and his hand flies up to brace against the ceiling.

"Don't tell me that surprised you," Ronan says. Adam shakes his head, dismissive. Ronan moves his hand down Adam's cock, runs his thumb over the head; the attitude melts off Adam's face. He bends low and kisses Adam's stomach, pushes his shirt further up to expose more of his body, rests his hand along the curve of his ribs.

"Do you know how good you looked driving my car?" Ronan murmurs. "You know what I kept thinking?" Adam shakes his head. Ronan leans in and cranes his neck up, gets his mouth as close to Adam's ear as he can. "If he's this smart and this good with his hands then this handjob's going to be fucking amazing." He slides his hand along Adam's side and brushes a thumb over his nipple. Adam's knees clamp tighter around him. "And you were _better_ than that, fuck, that was the hottest thing in the world, you're the hottest thing in the world, I can't believe you didn't stall the fucking car _once_." Adam breathes out, almost a laugh before it turns into a moan. "Shit, you're incredible, you're so fucking incredible."

"Oh -- God," Adam pants. "Ronan, I'm close."

"Yeah, I can tell." That gets him another of those half-laughs. Ronan rubs his face against Adam's chest. "C'mon, stop fighting it, I want to watch you get off."

Adam jerks his head to the side, fast, and presses his face against his arm. He makes a noise somewhere in his throat, high pitched and short, that cuts off just as suddenly as it started.

"You're so goddamn stunning right now," Ronan tells him, "I can't believe it, fuck, how do you always look amazing, when you're driving, when you're asleep, when you're at fucking McDonalds, I could watch you all day -- " Adam makes that noise again, longer, and then he thrusts his hips forward, cock pulsing in Ronan's hand.

Adam collapses onto him, after. Ronan tries to catch his breath, even though Adam is crushing him. There really isn't enough room for both of them on this seat, but fuck if Ronan is going to move before he has to, or ever, really.

It's Adam who stirs first, turning toward his left and reaching for something, then turning to the right. Ronan's too blissed out to really care about the squirming, but he does draw the line at Adam reaching over across him with his left arm and almost smacking his elbow on Ronan's nose.

He snakes an arm around Adam's waist, holding him in place.

"Do you mind?"

"How do you not have any napkins?" Adam complains. "Kleenex? Anything?"

"Just wipe your hand on my shirt. You already made a mess of it."

Adam bites his lip but doesn't argue, just wipes his hand across Ronan's chest. Ronan feels a tug somewhere in his gut, but before he can decide if that's hot or disgusting, Adam says, "this didn't really work out how I planned."

Ronan doesn't have to wonder how he feels about _that_ ; Adam might as well have smacked him across the face. "What," he says, too low, too harsh, "you don't jerk off every guy who does you a favor?"

A blush spreads across Adam's cheeks, dull red. "No. I don't." He opens the passenger door and steps out, zipping up his pants.

Ronan steps out after him, even though his legs feel rubbery. His shirt really is a mess; he yanks it off and throws it in the backseat, slams the door shut and then opens it again. There's a jacket crumpled up on the floor. He puts it on so at least he isn't topless in front of this church he just desecrated. He stalks around the car to the driver's seat.

Adam drops into the passenger seat a minute later. The atmosphere in the car has turned weird and strained. Ronan knows it's his fault, that what he said was stupid, but he doesn't know how to fix it. Something was wrong before he opened his dumb mouth, and he doesn't know what that was, except that maybe it was just -- the whole thing. Maybe the mistake was in not saying _no, you can just owe me one_.

"If you can get back to the highway I can give you directions from there," Adam says. So, okay, this isn't going to get fixed. It's just going to not have happened.

They drive for a while, the music still low but Adam offering nothing beyond the occasional "turn here." It's uneventful, except for the moment that Ronan downshifts into the wrong fucking gear and the car protests loudly and Ronan swears ever louder.

It isn't until they're weaving their way through Adam's neighborhood that he says, "sometimes I can't -- "

Ronan comes to a complete stop at a stop sign instead of rolling through, so he can look over. Adam's jaw is tense. He's looking down at his hands where they're clenched in his lap.

"It's really hard for me to get off," Adam says abruptly. "So I thought, I like this guy, if I just offer him a handjob it won't matter that I don't finish. We can have fun and he won't get annoyed at how long I'm taking."

"People get annoyed because of _how long_ they get to spend having sex with you?"

"Not at first. It stops being endearing pretty fast."

Ronan pulls up in front of Adam's building. Wishes that the building number weren't so clearly displayed, that he could pretend not to know where they are. Wishes Adam weren't looking out the window to notice they've arrived.

He gets that wish, at least in part; Adam turns away from the window, looks across the car at him. "It's never like this for me. So, thanks. For everything."

 _Thanks for everything_ is what someone says right before _goodbye_. Ronan doesn't want to hear that yet.

"Hey." He catches Adam's hand and lifts it up to his mouth, presses a kiss against the knuckles. "I meant what I said. All of it." Adam's face is burning, but he doesn't move, stays in Ronan's hand and Ronan's car. "I'm really glad that I let Gansey bully me into this."

That startles a quiet fragile laugh out of Adam. It burns in Ronan's ears; he can't help thinking of when he'd made Adam laugh before, his knees tight around Ronan's thighs and his face screwed up with joy and his cock hot and hard and slick in Ronan's hand -- but he also thinks that it's a sad kind of fucked up laugh. He thinks that he wants to make Adam laugh for real, so hard that he can't breathe.

But Adam says, "it's really late," and that's the end again, so Ronan lets go of Adam's hand.

Except the next thing Adam says isn't _goodbye_ , it's "you're not driving back to DC, are you?"

"Yeah? Why not."

"It's not safe driving at night. When you're tired."

"I do it all the time," Ronan says. "If I really can't make it I'll pull over and nap for an hour."

"That's -- " Adam makes a face, like he's trying to process that statement. It doesn't go well. He shakes his head like he's dismissing that train of thought. "You could do that. Or. You could crash at my place tonight."

A smile slowly spreads across Ronan's face. "Yeah?"

" _Yes_ ," Adam says, emphatic. "You can take a shower and sleep and drive back in the morning."

"That's a really generous offer," Ronan says. "I'll have to think of some way to show my gratitude."

"I have a few ideas."

Ronan leans toward Adam; when he's an inch away he asks, "how many of those ideas involve my car?"

Adam is still laughing when Ronan kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then Ronan "forgets" to drive back to DC in the morning.
> 
> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/189395805660/the-highways-low-and-the-low-ways-mine)!


End file.
